Contested Territory

The extent to which non-elite youth in premodern Western societies had a culture of their own is an open question. “Youth culture” here refers to the many ways in which young people found meaning in and made meaning out of their lives, while “non-elite youth” designates young men and women who grew up in working families: peasants, artisans, and day laborers. Just as the status of youth was ambiguous, the culture of non-elite youth was contested, both between youth and the rest of society and between male and female youth. The times and spaces available to non-elite boys and girls to develop and experience their own culture were framed by the tasks they had to accomplish during youth: acquire the skills that would allow them to earn a living and find a spouse. In the early modern period, the customary tolerance of the disruptive and rowdy aspects of youth behavior—rebelliousness, illicit sexuality, and violence—gave way to fear and suspicion, as spiritual and political rulers throughout Europe undertook campaigns to control, Christianize, restrict, or ban various manifestations of youth culture and the activities of youth groups. The effect of such measures was limited, which suggests that they were not consistently enforced and that the common people continued to tolerate youthful disorder. Historians’ responses have been as ambivalent as those of premodern adults. Was the (predominantly male) culture of non-elite youth an expression of joy, creativity, and freedom and inherently benign, even utopian, or was it inherently violent, aggressive, and cruel?

Intimacy Under Surveillance: Illicit Sexuality, Moral Policing, and the State in Contemporary Malaysia

Malaysia’s Malay-Muslim majority adheres to heteronormative forms of sexuality that recognise marriage as the only means of securing access to lawful sexual intimacy. Islam, Malay customs (adat), and the Malaysian state impose strict sanctions on pre- and extramarital intimacy in its Syariah criminal laws. A Vice Prevention Unit responsible for moral policing is legally authorised to arrest couples who violate Islamic rules of behaviour, including sexual offences such as khalwat (illicit proximity)—a crime of passion punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment. This article compares two khalwat trials in Kota Bharu and Kuala Lumpur’s Syariah court to illustrate what Peletz (2002) calls the judges’ “cultural logic of judicial reasoning”. In these trials, Syariah judges extend beyond a narrowed focus on gender to also consider cultural understandings of age, profession, family circumstances, and marital status, thus reproducing Malay adat understandings of intimacy, marriage, and personhood. In an effort to steer young couples away from forbidden sexual temptations, the Malaysian state liberalises access to marriage by recognising cross-border marriages contracted in Southern Thailand, offering financial incentives to young couples intending to marry and defending existing legal provisions allowing the marriage of minors. The Malaysian state’s mix of punitive, preventative, and pro-marriage policies, I suggest, are various ways of surveilling sexuality by bringing uncontrolled desires under the purview of matrimony, where it may find its lawful expression.

The Pursuit of Morality

This chapter considers the purpose and goals of Calvinist moral discipline, based on biblical precedent. It details popular reaction to the consistories, and considers the church’s disciplinary priorities: eradicating superstition and popular culture, punishing illicit sexuality, ensuring harmony, and dealing with public misconduct. Next, we examine the membership of the consistory—the identity of ministers and elders, their social status, and the process of co-optation on to the consistory. We consider the relationship between sacred and secular governance, and the overlap among consuls, councillors, and elders. We examine the operation of the consistory—the nature of interrogations, the reliance on hearsay, the shaming punishments it inflicted, its other responsibilities beyond moral discipline, and the links between Protestant churches. Finally, given the consistory’s agenda of enforcing patriarchy, we consider their attempts to implement domestic patriarchy, and their preoccupation with women’s appearance and sexuality, seen in their crusades against women’s clothing and prostitution.

Prostitution and Trafficking in the Age of HIV/AIDS

This epilogue links the colonial history of sexuality with the contemporary politics of HIV/AIDS and girl-child trafficking in Nigeria. The continuity and change in the institutional response to illicit sexuality mirrored the transformative process in the core structures of Nigeria's political and economic ordering. Unlike in the 1940s, when the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and the CWO were chiefly responsible for policing prostitution, postcolonial Nigeria witnessed the emergence of new organizations like the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), which monitors sexual exploitation of underage girls. Indeed, the character, intensity, and composition of regulatory agencies have changed to meet the new challenges of urbanization, HIV/AIDS, underdevelopment, and the globalization of sex in post-independence Nigeria.